TUSCALOOSA, Alabama -- The Tuscaloosa City Council voted unanimously to vacate portions of two of its streets Tuesday night, making way for the development of a 250,000 square foot retail center in the area.

The two streets, portions of 14th Street East and 13th Place East, are also known as Cedar Crest Circle. They once surrounded the Cedar Crest neighborhood, which was all but destroyed completely by the EF4 tornado that devastated the city in April 2011.

Alumni Development and Construction, LLC, the company planning to build the shopping center, called the Shoppes at Legacy Park, said it would make Tuscaloosa a shopping destination, and would draw in retailers that the city has never seen before, shops that have historically preferred places like Birmingham or Atlanta.

"This is going to be a springboard for Tuscaloosa," said Keith Owens, who represented the developers. "It's going to be a destination of its own."

Most major retailers have preset configurations for the layout of their stores, and Owens said incentives like lower rent rates had convinced almost every retailer that has been lined up to build in the new shopping center to bring their best configurations to the center.

"The agreement we made with the tenants is that we wanted their prime prototype," Owens said. "If you were to go to an Atlanta market or a Birmingham market or a Nashville market or Huntsville, what they sell there, we're going to sell here in Tuscaloosa."

The retailers that are looking to come to the area and find a home in the Shoppes at Legacy Park are still confidential, but Owens said his company would be able to make announcements about potential tenants in the next few weeks, and would include an outdoors store, a pet store, a specialty grocer, a new restaurant and more.

An overhead view of the site plans for the Shoppes at Legacy Park, a retail center to be developed on the site of the destroyed Cedar Crest neighborhood, which was almost completely annihilated by the EF4 tornado that tore through the city in April 2011. (MJM Architects)

Ultimately, Owens said, the goal is to bring a shopping center like Daphne's Jubilee Square or Patton Creek in Hoover to the Tuscaloosa market, raking in restaurants and retailers that this area has never brought in before.

City Councilman Lee Garrison said the shopping center, which will be easily walkable and will feature a fountain and lush vegetation, including mature trees and full shrubs, is clear example of what the community outlined as necessary in the Tuscaloosa Forward plan, the city's comprehensive recovery and renewal guidelines.

"Our community has been begging for a retail center like this for many years," Garrison said. "Hopefully as a community we can support minor zoning changes they're asking for and bring this project to fruition."